For proper cutting action, the distance between the bedknife and the cutting blade on a reel-type lawn mower is extremely critical. Typically, in conventional reel mowers, adjustment is manually done by rotating mechanical, threaded members that position the bedknife relative to the blade. This operation is time consuming, usually anywhere from ten to thirty minutes, and the resulting adjustment is often shortlived due to vibrations experienced during the mower operation, the blade striking hard objects, or violent movements of the mower over the ground.
Another problem in achieving proper and precise reel bedknife adjustment is that oftentimes operators of the equipment are unknowledgeable or inexperienced in the proper adjustment of the mower. If the blade, bedknife adjustment is too tight, premature wear will result, greatly reducing the operational life of the unit. On the other hand, if too great a distance is provided, improper cutting is the result along with other wear problems. Too much clearance can result in the abrasive surface of the grass rounding the edges of the blades, which even if properly adjusted later, results in a lack of proper cutting.
Another deficiency of the screw-type mechanical bedknife adjustment is that since it is mechanical in nature, it has threaded interacting parts. The mechanism, in order to be movable, must be lubricated which is undesirable because of the dirt and grit environment to which it is exposed. Therefore, it is not uncommon for these mechanical types of adjustments to freeze up or lock up.
And yet another problem is that most commercial mowing operations involve using a plurality of reel blade mowers pulled by a single vehicle. Each mower must be individually adjusted, a very time consuming operation.
The present invention uses the hydraulic fluid pressure available in most industrial reel-type mowers to overcome the deficiencies of the prior art by providing an automatic, remotely operated adjustment mechanism which will position in a single operation each bedknife in a plurality of mowers to a predetermined distance from the reel blades every time it is activated. Other reel mower blade adjusters in the prior art, such as U.S. Pat. No. 3,680,293 have failed to do this.